XML: It's Not Your Father's HTML | 2

XML

XML in the Browser

The big news in this category is that the next versions of the browsers from
both Microsoft and
Netscape will support the display of XML.
This means that XML content can displayed in those browsers without having to
be transformed into HTML first. Moreover, the browsers will support the
DOM (Document Object
Model), a W3C standard for accessing and manipulating XML. The DOM will let
Web site authors manipulate XML content inside pages through scripting.

How will these features be used? You can expect to see XML data delivered to
the browsers but only selectively displayed, under user control. For example,
your stock portfolio information could be downloaded to your browser, but you
could chose to first show only the top three biggest changers. Then you could
show summary statistics or historical data, all without going back to the
server to get more data. The result is a faster, more individualized browsing
experience.

It is interesting to note that you can "sprinkle" XML tags among
HTML tags. Since browsers ignore tags they don't understand, you can display
such pages in all browsers. But the pages (with a little care) can also be
valid XML documents, and so are available to be processed by XML applications.
So, for example, you could display your job ad in your own site as HTML, but
have the same ad picked up by a content aggregation site to be stored in a
database. The XML tags could let you reliably indicate which numbers in the ad
refer to salary, which are part of the address, etc.